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Assorted links
1. A new way of learning history of economic thought
2. Tim Harford recommends ten books
3. How to breed callousness: send a doctor to school
4. Via Greg Mankiw, tax rates on the middle class are falling
5. Dan Ariely says we are predictably irrational on Obama
6. Rate busters?
Posted by Tyler Cowen on February 29, 2008 at 01:32 PM in Web/Tech | Permalink
Comments
How to breed callousness: send a doctor to school
Is this so surprising? You start out idealistic, full of "save-the-world" vim and vigor...and then you actually have to work. Then you actually have to deal with patients, who aren't all cute, heroically brave, tragic cases. Those patients are people, and people are often impatient, ugly, and just plain assholes.
I bet you'd find the exact same thing if you surveyed prospective teachers or members of any other similar professions. Nurses, flight attendants, even hair dressers, etc.
Posted by: Bob Montgomery at Feb 29, 2008 2:48:10 PM
It may not be surprising, but it is, I think, lamentable. The healing arts entail a standard of care, even when one is not able to cure. Medical school is inculcating self-important "I'm a doctor, dammit, I've got lives to save," attitudes, and while we release residents to war against disease, they're often missing the reality of the patients in front of them. To be sure, this happens in other professions, but we're uniquely vulnerable when sick or exposed (imagine a room full of medical residents staring at you, but hardly acknowledging your humanity as you squirm in a paper gown). I think a too-mechanized view of the body is to blame, along with the proliferation of plastic surgery and cosmetic medicine that shifts the standards of professional judgment and care to a contractual relation like any other.
Posted by: michelle at Feb 29, 2008 3:28:12 PM
Seriously, folks, why expect doctors to be anything else? What other profession do we demand empathy from? Offhand, I can think of none. Oh, we'd like it from, say, the police officer we deal with, but on the whole, we'd prefer the cop to be good and fair than to be empathetic.
It's time to grow up and stop expecting doctors to be anything other than just good at their jobs.
Posted by: pawnking at Feb 29, 2008 3:51:45 PM
Hartford's right about Jacobs. Glad to see it's his #1 (I'm going to pretend that those are ordinal preferences). What a fantastic book. I went to grad school to get a PhD in economics because of her book. Of course, then I got there and nowhere was she to be found.
Posted by: jason voorhees at Feb 29, 2008 4:26:04 PM
Through the 1980s the drop in the tax burden was essentially offset by the increase in the federal debt-- the tax burden plus the federal debt as a share of gdp was essentially a constant. So is replacing taxes with debt an improvement, or is it just a deferral of the taxes?
Posted by: spencer at Feb 29, 2008 4:47:53 PM
pawnking, what exactly do you mean by "good at their jobs?" Making correct diagnoses and prescribing appropriate pills? Performing surgery with proficiency? Fine. But a parking ticket isn't going to fundamentally change the course of one's life. A physician's actions might. Given that we Americans have a tendency to experience both birth and death in the context of a hospital, a little metaphysical introspection and compassion is not too much to ask.
Posted by: michelle at Feb 29, 2008 5:21:39 PM
"How to breed callousness: send a doctor to school"
Errr - this is a feature, not a bug.
Or do people want doctors to do the spontaneous and empathic things - things like fainting at the sight of blood, vomiting at the smell of an anal fistula, or showing their disgust at patients' skin diseases?
No - medics need to be imperturbable in the face of anything and everything, and do whatever needs doing.
Posted by: BGC at Feb 29, 2008 5:32:05 PM
Spencer wrote: "Through the 1980s the drop in the tax burden was essentially offset by the increase in the federal debt-- the tax burden plus the federal debt as a share of gdp was essentially a constant. So is replacing taxes with debt an improvement, or is it just a deferral of the taxes?"
It's tempting to say that, but if recent trends are any indication, the upper class will be paying off those debts, not the middle class.
Posted by: Chuck at Feb 29, 2008 6:58:05 PM
Callous doctors? Old news.
http://eqsq.com/vivreLaDifference/doctores-nurses-and-inflicting-pain.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/health/article2544356.ece
"Many therapies require doctors to conduct examinations, perform operations or administer drugs that will be uncomfortable, painful or distressing to their patients. A normal reaction to inflicting this pain would limit their capacity to treat people.
The new research suggests that they have learnt to control this, to allow them to do their jobs more effectively. “They have learnt through their training and practice to keep a detached perspective,” Professor Decety said.
“Without such a mechanism, performing their practice could be overwhelming or distressing and, as a consequence, impair their ability to be of assistance for their patients.”
Posted by: Tim Worstall at Mar 1, 2008 6:43:29 AM
and nurses? don't they often do the real dirty work of exfoliating the skin of burn patients and keeping anal fistulas clean? They run invasive tests, administer injections...yet why are they generally regarded as so much more empathic? The necessary distancing still holds for them, but somehow they're more widely regarded as giving a damn.
Posted by: michelle at Mar 1, 2008 1:15:26 PM
and nurses? don't they often do the real dirty work of exfoliating the skin of burn patients and keeping anal fistulas clean? They run invasive tests, administer injections...yet why are they generally regarded as so much more empathic? The necessary distancing still holds for them, but somehow they're more widely regarded as giving a damn.
Posted by: michelle at Mar 1, 2008 1:16:09 PM
Posted by: 翻译公司 at Mar 22, 2008 2:59:48 AM
